Perhaps Laura explains a position, but I wonder if it would extend to defending Larry Summers to the Harvard faculty.

We have free speech. But that freedom does not free us from the public consequences of that speech. Some Nazi stands up and starts spouting White Power in the crowd next to me, I'm not going to stand there and say, "Oh, that's a nice opinion. Tell me more of what you think."

Ozzie has a responsibility to the Marlins organization, and while he has the right to say whatever he wants, you step on your employers toes enough, they're going to have to respond.

There is not a direct equivalency between Summers ("Dames just aren't as innately capable as us menfolk.") and Guillen ("Damn if the guy hasn't stood up to the biggest imperialist power for over half a century. Impressive").

I understand the desire to not say stupid shit, to be mindful of audience and context, and Ozzie has congenital foot-in-mouth, but hysteria is hysteria and the problem is mostly with the response to him than what he actually said.

There's got to be a point at which you stand up to people's insane overreactions otherwise you're pretty much guaranteeing a tyranny of oppressive thuggish dumbassery. Whether it's Ozzie Guillen or Gunter Grass or Bill Maher or Karheinz Stockhausen or....

As Julian Bond (of SNCC, NAACP) said "You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of understanding."

2. There is no equivalence between Larry Summers and Ozzie Guillen, as Nick points out. Larry Summers was/is responsible for employing large numbers of people, and if he thinks one gender is stupid or incapable, that bias is likely to be expressed in his hiring, retention and tenure practices. Ozzie's feelings about Castro has no such effect.

3. Maurice's choice of example is an obvious attempt to bait me. Obvious and lame.

4. I hope you all fully realize how idiotic it is to conjecture on being suspended with or without pay and the idea of Ozzie being given a vacation. I'm assuming none of you is really that stupid.

I don't understand your freedom of speech stance , he is not going to jail.

That's why the First Amendment has no bearing here, as I said in my post. But 9Casey, do you believe freedom of speech is only relevant if there is a prison sentence attached? If I went to a peace demonstration, and my employer saw me on TV and fired me, do you think there's a freedom of speech issue there? Or is freedom of speech not an issue because I hadn't been arrested and put in jail?

If my attendance at that rally had absolutely no bearing on my ability to do my job, do you say, her employer chose to discipline her, no freedom of speech issue there?

Larry Summers was/is responsible for employing large numbers of people, and if he thinks one gender is stupid or incapable, that bias is likely to be expressed in his hiring, retention and tenure practices.

Larry Summers doesn't think one gender is stupid or incapable, and he never said anything like that.

I point this out because I actually am for free speech for everyone, including Guillen and Summers, and not because I am glad both were disciplined. (I also think they were both wrong, as in mistaken, about what they said.)

It's not that he didn't use those exact words. He didn't say anything remotely equivalent to stating that women are stupid or incapable.

He said the difference in gender representation in the sciences might be partly due to innate brain differences, which is probably false but not an unreasonable idea.Also, the hypothesis he was talking about was that the curve of ability distribution is slightly narrower for females than for males, so that there could be significantly less representation at the 'high' end (and at the low end). Even if this were true, it would not mean that women were stupider than men or had less capability.

Anyway, after reading Charlie Pierce's article I feel a lot more angry at Ozzie's critics than I ever was at Summers' detractors.

Maurice, I don't want to argue about interpretations of what Larry Summers said. There is no transcript, as he was speaking from notes, so it's probably down to whose interpretation you read. Your version differs from mine.

9C, your distinction between freedom of expression and assembly is splitting hairs. Substitute another form of activism if you prefer, writing on my blog or circulating a petition or speaking at a rally, whatever, it makes no difference. And then, could you answer my question?

My point re jail time: if uttering an unpopular view in public carries strongly negative consequences that grossly affect one's life - and we only consider freedom of speech violated if there's an arrest and criminal conviction - then the right to free speech is meaningless. It's a right in name only.

You can go on about Ozzie being an idiot, but there are more important issues around this.